Since World War II our colleges have been teaching that the use of land should be segregated. Manufacturing, commercial and retail are carefully separated into their own areas away from housing, in contrast to Europe where business and residential have been co-mingled since cities began. These postwar students are now in control of land use in America and we are starting to see how this can affect other things.
In the natural progression of marketing techniques, retail has developed into what is called “The Malling of America.” Downey saw this with the development of Stonewood. The next progression has been to have one big store instead of many small stores. It should be noted that several years back when Price Club was in Cerritos it had higher annual gross sales than the Cerritos Mall and so the concept was valid. In the cities it was regional malls, but in the small towns it was Wal-Mart which lead the way and literally stripped the retail heart out of town after town all across America. The effect was the same. With no housing allowed downtown anymore, it left ghost towns to further decay.
So Downey is not unique with its troubles. There are thousands of towns facing the same tough decisions of having to tell its city planners to start thinking anew about land use and start moving people back downtown by changing the zoning codes. But before you can have development you first have to change the laws. As an added benefit, mixed use raises the value of the land because a developer can get two uses on one piece of property. This would also apply to the old courthouse site, should it be sold.
However, I would propose not selling the old courthouse site. Instead, with people downtown we need some green space, as in a park, and the old courthouse site would make a beautiful park. It’s paid for and really belongs to all of us. It even comes with its own parking lot right next door. I advance that the first priority is to set about revising the zoning codes to allow housing downtown as a blanket revision, not on a parcel by parcel basis. Let’s have some “assisted living” units near the hospital or have condos downtown, even on Firestone, like the old Nissan site. Allow condos over stores and, yes, all these new people will need a park. We need families downtown, families with children. They can be first-time buyers who can later move into our excellent housing as their families grow.
The first step is to change the zoning codes and then step back and let the market forces work. We need people with vision, imagination and the willingness to change. We do not have to give anything away. We just need to make the city user friendly, and that starts with City Hall.